Stifel Financial Corp.
Q1 2016 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 10 May 2016

[Operator:]

Good evening. My name is Blair and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. Jim Zemlyak, CFO, you may begin your call.

[James Mark Zemlyak:]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon. This is Jim Zemlyak, CFO of Stifel. I would like to welcome everyone to our conference call today to discuss our first quarter 2016 financial results. Please note this conference call is recorded. If you'd like a copy of today's presentation, you may download the slides from our website at www.stifel.com. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind the listeners that this presentation may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not statements of fact or guarantees of performance. They may include statements regarding, among other things, our ability to successfully integrate acquired companies or branch offices and financial advisors; general economic, political, regulatory and market conditions; the investment banking and brokerage industries; our objectives and results; and also may include our belief regarding the effects of various regulatory matters, legal proceedings, management expectations, our liquidity and funding sources, counterparty risks or other similar matters. As such, they are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual future results to differ materially from those discussed in the statements. To supplement our financial statements presented in accordance with GAAP, we may use certain non-GAAP measures of financial performance and liquidity. These non-GAAP measures should only be considered together with the company's GAAP results. To the extent we discuss non-GAAP measures, the reconciliation to GAAP is available on our website at stifel.com. And finally, for a discussion of risks and uncertainties in our business, please see the business factors affecting the company and the financial services industry in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and MD&A results in the company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO of Stifel, Ron Kruszewski.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to listen to our first quarter 2016 results. After the market closed we released our first quarter results and posted a slide deck on our website. First, I will run through our financial results for the quarter as well as the progress we've made on growing our balance sheet. I will then touch on some of the key industry drivers impacting Stifel such as the DOL fiduciary rule and interest rate sensitivity, before opening up the call to questions. So with that, let's start with my opening comments and some of the highlights for the quarter. The diversity of Stifel's business model that has evolved through both organic growth and acquisition was highlighted in the quarter as the firm generated record quarterly revenue and sequential improvement in EPS. The growth in our private client business, Stifel Bank & Trust, our institutional fixed income business more than offset the negative impact that increased market volatility had on the equity capital markets business, specifically investment banking, during the first quarter. In terms of the results from the first quarter, we are pleased that despite what was a volatile and challenging quarter for the markets, we generated record quarterly revenue of $620 million, which was up 7% sequentially and up 11% year-over-year. Much of the growth was driven by the record Global Wealth Management segment that generated revenue of $380 million, which was up 9% sequentially and 15% as compared to the first quarter of last year. This segment was the focus of the majority of our growth initiatives in 2015 and we are beginning to see the revenue benefits from the acquisitions of Barclays's Wealth Management and Sterne Agee as well as growth in our balance sheet. To that point, revenue at Stifel Bank & Trust was up 34% sequentially and 49% year-over-year due to both higher short-term rates and balance sheet growth. Overall, assets of the holding company level increased to $14.2 billion and are up 54% from the same period a year ago. The diversity of our institutional business model helped to keep the decline in that segment's revenue to just 2% sequentially and we were up 1% from the prior year. I'd like to highlight that our acquisition of Sterne Agee's fixed income business was a meaningful contributor to our 38% growth in institutional fixed income revenue – excuse me. So overall, revenues are up 11%, but pre-tax margins declined from 14.3% to 11.4% resulting in the decline in EPS on a core basis by 12% to $0.57 per diluted share. The quarter was impacted by headwinds that included a higher comp ratio, increased legal expenses, higher loan loss provision and a mark-to-market loss on a private equity investment. We also took advantage of the decline in equity markets. During the quarter, we repurchased 2.7 million shares of our stock at an average price of $33.85. On January 4, we completed the acquisition of Eaton Partners, a global fund placement advisory firm, and recently we added two new directors to our board, Kathleen Brown and Maura Markus. I'm very pleased to welcome such qualified directors to Stifel's board. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank Alton Irby and Charlie Dill for their services. Kathleen and Maura will be replacing them. Alton and Charlie both retired from the board pursuant to the company's retirement policy. Lastly, the Department of Labor released its final rule on the fiduciary standard for retirement accounts in early April. While it takes time to fully digest and understand the specifics of this new regulation, we believe that Stifel is well-positioned to handle any of the implications of the new rule and I will give more thoughts later on the call. So let me go through our revenue and segment results. The primary drivers of the increase both quarterly and annually were brokerage revenue, asset management, and net interest income. These line items in both Global Wealth Management and Institutional segments benefited from our recent acquisition as well as our increased balance sheet. Brokerage revenue was driven by stronger private client commission levels as well as increased institutional fixed income flow business. This offset declines in investment banking. Turning to the next slide, (7

[Operator:]

The first question comes from the line of Chris Harris from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Chris M. Harris:]

Thanks. Hey, Ron.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Hey, Chris.

[Chris M. Harris:]

So we know it was obviously a difficult quarter for capital markets and specifically ECM. Wonder if you could talk a little bit about not quantitatively necessarily but just qualitatively what things have been like in April and so far in May? Have things gotten a little bit better than they were in March? Or is it still kind of flattish to where we were in that particular month?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

There have been – in March and in the latter half of March, you did see some improvement. I would just say that I feel that sort of the malaise that surrounds the equity capital raising is still evident. It's kind of hard to envision 90% declines in the fee pool continuing throughout the year but I wouldn't say there's been a marked improvement certainly in April. And it's sort of a quandary in my mind between the overall view of the economy and what's going on in capital markets generally. So it feels – it not only feels, it is slow and as I look at the pipeline, I believe that it will get better, but it's not a marked improvement in April.

[Chris M. Harris:]

Got you. Okay. And the other question I wanted to ask was in private client, I heard you say that that Barclays maybe came in a little bit less than what you guys were anticipating. I didn't quite catch the reason for that so maybe if you can expand on that. And then I noticed there you lost a few advisors in the quarter, so maybe you can give us a little bit of color on what happened there.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, first of all, I'll take your second question first. We always – if you look historically, we generally have a decline in the first quarter. It relates to the way that we set our expectations for the year in that people that believe and/or retire. So it's always a marked time, at least in our business, that people will finish a year and then will retire in the first quarter. But we also – that's where we set our performance expectations for the prior year are played out always in the first quarter. And so that what you're seeing in this quarter, if you go back and look, you'll see the same general picture in prior years. With respect to Barclays, the Barclays business is both a very nice, high net worth advisory business but it's also a transactional business and specifically in syndicate as it relates – as this is really the old Lehman (32

[Chris M. Harris:]

Okay. Make sense. Thank you.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak from Nomura. Your line is open.

[Sharon H. Leung:]

Hi. Good evening. This is actually Sharon Leung filling in for Steven. Just had a quick one on the fed loan office's survey. The most recent one suggested that the banks are tightening underwriting standards on C&I loans. And I guess, how should we think about that in the context of where we should expect the pace of loan growth and your appetite for C&I loans?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

I would like to think that we've always had some pretty tight underwriting standards in our C&I portfolio and so as it relates to us, I wouldn't say that there was a marked change in the way we underwrite loans and I think we've been very selective in even loans that we participate in. So I don't really see that impact. Did you have a second part of that question? I'm sorry.

[Sharon H. Leung:]

No. Just in terms of like what we should expect for your appetite for C&I loan growth moving forward.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, I believe that our opportunity in C&I loans are still extensive. We've said that we believe we had a lot of growth potential, as you can see, since the third quarter of last year we've grown our consolidated assets from a little under $10 billion to $14 billion and we continue to see that growth. But as always, we're going to be selective in what we always believe are risk-adjusted returns. So I would say that I know what you're talking about. I think that we've always been selective, especially as it relates to credit. I believe you'll – we've said that we'll get to $15.5 billion by mid-summer. I still stand by that and we believe we could grow our balance sheet to $18 billion in our current capital target. So not much is changing for us as it relates to your specific question about underwriting standards.

[Sharon H. Leung:]

Okay. Got it. And then one more just regarding the DOL. Under the final rule, we were just wondering whether, because the conversion of brokerage to advisory falls under the BIC, whether that limits at all your ability to convert legacy brokerage relationships to advisory?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

I think that – look, that's a very detailed question. I think it's open. I think I believe that the limitation of going from brokerage to advisory is in 2017. That's not been clarified, but the rule doesn't take effect to 2017. Certainly, you can – all you will be able to in the future convert brokerage accounts to advisory, but that will be done under the BIC. Today, I believe you can go from brokerage advisory, and I'm sure it occurred today, it happens every day. IRA brokerage accounts are converting to advisory accounts not subject to the BIC. The rule does not take effect until April 2017.

[Sharon H. Leung:]

Okay. Understood. Thanks for taking my questions.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan from JMP Securities. Your line is open.

[Devin P. Ryan:]

Hey, good afternoon, Ron. Maybe one starting here on coming back to capital management, $92 million in buyback's obviously a big number. Moving forward, if there aren't acquisitions that you see that are attractive, assuming that you do hit your bank targets, can you help us think about the capacity for further buybacks? And I'm assuming the $92 million a lot higher than normal. And then with shares at current levels, is it reasonable to think that buybacks are kind of the logical outlet there? Or is there any reason why you would actually build excess capital for opportunities that maybe we're just not thinking about?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, I think that first of all, capital management is always – we always view it as return on invested capital whether that return is by sharing – by returning capital versus – via share repurchases or leveraging our balance sheet. So we're always looking at the numbers and again how we can do that. The way I'd answer your question is, if you look at what we've presented, we get from $14 billion to $18 billion gets us to our capital levels. And at that point, we'll look at increased earnings that add how and how we either leverage our earnings or buy back our stock. So in the past, we've bought $92 million and more than that since the third quarter. We'll always be opportunistic as to when we buy back our stock, and we'll weigh those returns versus the returns that the market may provide. So in general, when our stock was – got as low as it did we were very aggressive in buying back stock, but I'd also like to increase our bank's balance sheet to – because we put a lot of infrastructure in place to support a balance sheet of $18 billion. And so we'd like to do that. We believe that that's the highest and highest returns to shareholders, but we've shown that we'll buy back our stock too. That's a double-edged answer to your question, but we will always look at the numbers and do what we think is in the best interest of earnings and diluted earnings in our shareholder value.

[Devin P. Ryan:]

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe bigger picture on DOL. I know we don't want to get too specific here, but we're starting to see some of the product manufacturers change share classes already. Commission structures are evolving. Yeah, I know everyone's still trying to digest but are there any changes bigger pictures that you're already observing in the business maybe ahead of implementation just as we've had the proposed rule out there? And with that said, are you expecting any change in the industry around maybe with the manufacturers or are you anticipating making any – that that could change maybe the broader mix moving forward?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

First of all, I think the industry will evolve and I think that you're going to see manufacturers of product evolve as well, meaning that there will be more products that are available for advisory relationships because that's certainly – make no mistake about it. The DOL rule certainly in my opinion is not – discourages, let me put it that way, discourages brokerage relationships. And so many firms are going to move to an advisory or flat fee arrangement that's outside of brokerage. And the manufacturers obviously see that as well and will be creating product that is appropriate for fee-based accounts versus brokerage accounts. So you'll see share classes without 12b-1s. You may very well see annuities that are structured in a way that they can have a fee versus the upfront charges on annuities. So I think you're going to see an evolution of this business. If I would look past all of that, I think the real challenge for the industry is trying to understand that brokerage IRAs that are under a fiduciary standard very similar to ERISA (41

[Devin P. Ryan:]

That's really helpful. Thanks, Ron. And then just last one on credit in the quarter, obviously, a little bit of an uptick. I appreciate the color on those loans, but I was a little bit surprised by the provisioning that the uptick in non-accruals was more than I would have thought, given – or excuse me, the provision was lower than I would have thought given the uptick in non-accruals. So just curious if that was because of the collateral position or if there's anything else you can share...

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, look, I – first of all, it was not an uptick in non-accruals. It was an uptick in impaired, okay? And our uptick in impaired are all current, but there's been a pretty rigorous review in loans in the SNC process. And so what you saw was an increase in our impaired loans. But as I said, I believe our non-accruals, was it $2 million? Yeah, or I'm sorry, past due. The non-accruals were – let me come back to you with that number. Is that all right?

[Devin P. Ryan:]

Yeah. Of course. No, that's fine. I appreciate the color. Thank you.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Okay.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Paris from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[Daniel Paris:]

Hey, Ron.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Hey, Daniel.

[Daniel Paris:]

You've given us some helpful color on kind of sizing the balance sheet growth opportunity, and I know you've also spoken in the past about this kind of 80 basis points to 100 basis points ROA on that marginal growth. Wondering if you can just help us think through what is factored into that in terms of interest rates and charge-off levels? I'm just trying to get a sense if there's upside potential there if rates rise quicker than expected or if credit stays lower for longer.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

I mean, I think that – I mean, I don't think – I mean, what we were – we were trying to be illustrative, Daniel. I mean, our ROA is higher than 1% in the bank, in fact, significantly higher. I think that what we were trying to show was just using 1%, which in and of itself is conservative relative to our current mix, how we fund, what our efficiency ratio is. So if you want to think about – if you want to think about the way we've looked at that, you can think about the 1% incremental ROA versus our historical ROA, and upside to that on a normal basis. The downside to that scenario would be quick (45

[Daniel Paris:]

Understood. That's helpful. Thanks. And maybe just switching gears real quick. I was glad to see the pre-tax margin ticked up linked quarter. I know this is a challenging revenue environment and there seems like there's a couple one-off items that you spoke about as well, but you're still running well below the 15% pre-tax margin that you've spoken about over time. So what does it take to bridge that gap? Are there other things that you can do on the non-comp side if the revenue environment doesn't accelerate from here?

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, a couple things. Let me reiterate what I said, or at least tell you what I said again. I think that last year, our margins were 14.3% and this year they were 11.4%. And the thing that drives that differential is what I pointed out, all right? First of all, even though we have record revenues I would tell you that the revenue environment in many of our businesses was challenging especially on the equity side of our business and so that was one of the reasons that our comp ratio went up 110 basis points. So there's 110 basis points in margin compression versus last year just on the comp ratio. The other ones that impacted that margin, as I said, was increased legal expenses, which we don't expect to stay at these levels. The higher loan loss provision, which was unique to the SNC review, I would like to think that doesn't continue at this level. We had a mark-to-market loss in a private equity investment. So taken all together, that accounts for almost 95% of the differential between, what is it, 14.3% and 11.4%. 14.3% pre-tax margins and 11.4%. And while I don't – I'm not going to say that these are non-recurring, I will say those were elevated levels of expense. I would like to believe I'm comfortable with our comp ratio. As our business has improved on the institutional side, primarily equity, I believe that will improve. I believe as we grow our balance sheet, that'll drive our comp ratio lower. And I think that these loan loss provision and legal and the markdown of our investment are all maybe – well, they certainly explain, in my eyes, the difference between, say, 14% and 11.5%.

[Daniel Paris:]

Got it. Thanks a lot, Ron. Appreciate it.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Yep.

[Operator:]

There are no further audio questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to the presenters for closing remarks.

[Ronald J. Kruszewski:]

Well, I would again like to thank everyone for their interest in our company. I will say that I believe that we've built a great firm with a great business model and a diversified business model. We are weighted more so than maybe some other firms to the equity markets and the difficulty in the equity markets in the first quarter were very difficult. But I believe that we have a lot of upside as those markets improve, which I believe they will. So we'll continue on our path of growing prudently, optimizing our expense base and growing the value of this company. And I look forward to reporting back to all of you in the second quarter results next quarter. So thank you very much and good afternoon.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.